'Oh yes,' Guyon said darkly. 'I am to pay for that privilege too, mayhap with my life.'
There was a taut silence. Emma drew a shaken breath and murmuring something about food and wine, fled the room.
Miles sighed and sat down on a stool, his movements easy. As yet, his fifty-four years sat lightly on his body which remained, through vigorous activity, firm, if more stocky than in his slender youth. 'I know the girl's mother,' he said thoughtfully. 'Alicia FitzOsbern, Breteuil's sister. She was pretty at fifteen, very pretty indeed. If I had not already been married and satisfied with your mother, I might have offered for her myself.'
Guyon grunted. 'I always understood you had no liking for the FitzOsbern clan.'
'The male stock, no. They all were - and are, when you consider Breteuill - snakes, but Alicia was different. She was courageous and gentle and she had eyes like summer twilight. She never forgave her menfolk for selling her in marriage to Maurice de Montgomery.'
Guyon reached for the towel that Emma had left conveniently to hand and stepped from the tub.
'Reason enough for any woman to hate,' he said, thinking of the former lord of Ravenstow who he had always thought resembled a glutted boar atop a dung heap.
'As I remember, Judith was born late into the marriage after numerous slurs of barrenness had been cast in Alicia's direction,' Miles commented, folding his arms. 'I doubt it was all her fault. As far as I know, for all his lechery Maurice sired no bastards.'
Guyon donned a fur-lined bedrobe and called entry to the two servants who came to empty the water from the tub down a waste shaft in the corner of the room.
'At least Ravenstow is a formidable keep from which to establish your dominance,' Miles said.
'Whatever other sins lie on de Belleme's soul, he is a master architect.'
'And I suspect one way or another he will attempt to annex it to his earldom. Ravenstow guards the approach to the Chester plain and all roads east - idealy suited to the purposes of robbery and extortion, would you not say?'
Miles eyed him and said nothing, although his jaw tightened.
'There is always the Holy Land, I suppose,' Guyon added with a twisted smile. 'Freedom from Rufus and de Belleme, and the glory of slaughtering infidels to gild my soul. I--' He broke off and drew a deep breath as Emma re-entered the room followed by a maid bearing food and wine.
Compressing his lips Guyon sat down on the bench near the hearth.
'Rhosyn is in the hall ,' Emma announced as she dismissed the woman and poured the wine herself. 'You will have to tell her.'
Guyon eyed his sister warily as he took the cup and drank. 'What of it? She made it plain at Michaelmas she would not dwell as my mistress. She has no cause to complain.'
'She might not have had a cause at Michaelmas, Guy, but she certainly has one now.'
Guyon's wariness sharpened. 'Meaning?'
'Meaning she is not so skilled a herb wife as she thought and the rounding of her belly proves it. Midsummer I would say, to look at her.'
Guyon glanced from his sister's disapproval to his father's blank surprise. He took another swallow of wine to hide his consternation and feigned nonchalance. 'I'll speak to her tomorrow, but I do not see that this marriage will change anything. Willingly I will acknowledge and provide for a child if that is what she wants, but Rhosyn is a wild law unto herself.'
'I am not thinking of wild law, but Welsh law,' Emma said, as he reached for a piece of bread. 'A man's firstborn son, even begotten out of wedlock to a mistress, has equal rights with the other legitimate heirs of his body.'
Guyon discarded the notion with a shake of his head. 'I am Norman born, Em, and Welsh rights do not pertain this side of the border. I could cede a couple of holdings to a chance-gotten child without too much hue and cry, but no more than that. Besides, the child is yet unborn and might well be a daughter, in which case I will find her a good marriage when the time comes.'
Emma's full mouth pursed. 'It needn't have happened at all .'
'Don't be so finicky, sister,' he growled. 'The sin of fornication is a peccadillo compared with the ones I could have perpetrated at court.'
Colour flooded his sister's face. Her husband, as a minor chamberlain, knew most of what transpired in the immediate circle surrounding the King: the scandals, the petty power struggles, the prevalent vices, and Guyon, with his striking looks, disregard for propriety and hint of Welsh barbarity was a magnet to which all three were drawn whether he wished it or no. 'I expect you and Prince Henry keep tallies to compare your ruttings,' she snapped.
'Indeed we do,' Guyon said with a sarcastic flourish. 'How did you guess?'
Miles eased tactfully to his feet and stretched like a cat uncoiling. 'Time enough for discussion tomorrow,' he said. 'I'm for my bed and I'm sure Guyon is too.' He gave his daughter an eloquent stare. Guyon had his trencher piled high enough already without her heavy-handed seasoning of moral chastisement and righteous advice.
'A conspiracy of men,' Emma declared with a sniff, and then gave a tight smile. 'I know when I am beaten.' Going to her brother, she stooped and kissed his stubble-blurred cheek.
He tugged the copper-coloured braid peeping from beneath her veil. 'That does not mean you will give in!'
'Does it not?' She arched her brow at him. 'Let me tell you, I will gladly relinquish the battle to your wife and hope she has better fortune in taming your ways!'
'Know when you are beaten, do you?' he needled as she went towards the curtain. 'Is that why you always have to have the last word?'
CHAPTER 2
In the great hall , Rhosyn rolled over on her lumpy makeshift pallet and sat up, irritated to discover that yet again her bladder was full . Beside her, oblivious, her father snored. He was a prosperous wool merchant these days, with a paunch to prove it. Complacent. They had fared well since their business dealings with Miles le Gallois. There was much profit to be had in wool and the cloth woven from the fleeces. Lord Miles bred it raw on the hoof. Her father sold the clip in Flanders and speculated a little on the wider trade markets - spices and leather, silks and glass - and they prospered.
Beside their grandfather, the children of her first, now widowed marriage slept in a puppy huddle. Rhys was ten, a sturdy, dark-eyed replica of his father. Eluned, seven, resembled herself -
slender and fey with raven hair, autumnal eyes and a luminous complexion. This coming child, as yet scarcely realised; well , if a boy, she could only hope by God's charity that he inherited Guyon's beauty married to a less difficult nature.
Stupid, she thought, irritated at herself as she quietly left her children and her father to seek out the garderobe. Stupid to have been so easily caught, she who knew all her herbs and simples, or thought she knew because they had always worked before. Too late now, too dangerous, and not the season for the plants that would have cured her condition.
She had been in two minds whether to make this trip to Hereford with her father, but had reasoned that it would be her last opportunity before the weather grew too difficult for travel.
She needed to purchase linen for swaddling bands that she could stitch during the dark, hall -bound months of winter; and winter's threat was already upon them. The knife-bitter wind and the scudding snow squall s had caused them to curtail their journey early in the day and seek shelter under Lord Miles's roof.
Guyon's arrival at dusk had been a surprise, and she was not sure if it was a welcome one.
The news of his impending marriage had caused her no grief. She had always known the day would come, indeed, had held herself a little aloof with that knowledge in mind. He had a duty to take a wife of his own status and beget heirs, a wife who would have more in common with him than she ever would.
Rhosyn's practical nature told her there was no point in building upon their tenuous relationship.
For all his fluency in the Welsh tongue and his ability to adapt to Welsh ways, he was only one quarter of the Cymru and he was raised to be a marcher lord who would ride into Wales on the back of a warhorse to ravage the land if his King so commanded. He regarded the towering Norman border keeps as home and refuge, not as grey, enclosing prisons that hemmed in the soul.
The latrine was cold and stank of its main function, and she did not linger. Instead of returning to the hall , however, Rhosyn made her way to the small wall chamber where Guyon usually lodged when he stayed here. His gazehound, Cadi, lay outside the entrance, her nose tucked into her tail, but rose with a joyous whine of greeting. Rhosyn paused to stroke the dog and make a fuss of her, before lifting the heavy curtain.
Guyon had been sound asleep, but came immediately to his senses at the first soft clink of the curtain rings and the muffled whine of the dog.
This was the keep where he had been born and raised, his welcome here guaranteed, but these days he was so conditioned to react to danger, and complete security was so seldom his, that he was out of bed and across the room in the space of a heartbeat. He lunged at the figure outlined in the glow from the corridor flare. The crown of his captive's head butted his chin, jarring his teeth together. He bit his tongue and tasted blood. A supple body writhed against his and he felt the swell of a woman's breast beneath his fingers.
'It's me, Rhosyn!' she gasped indignantly, her French bearing the lilting accent of Wales. 'Have you lost your wits?'
'More likely you have lost yours!' he retorted, but with amusement now that he was fully awake and enjoying the feel of her body against his own. 'It is a foolish thing to creep up on a man in the middle of the night,
cariad
. Oft-times I sleep with a naked sword at my side. I might have cut off your head!'
'I have seen your naked sword frequently enough for it not to concern me,' Rhosyn replied with spurious innocence and pressed against him in the darkness. She tangled her fingers in his hair and stood on tiptoe to bite his ear and then whisper into it: 'But perhaps it would be safer to sheathe it, my lord.'
Guyon laughed huskily. 'That sounds like a fine idea,' he said, before closing her mouth with a kiss, his fingers busy with the lacings of her gown.
'Do you happen to know of a fitting scabbard?'
Rhosyn stretched languidly like a cat and then relaxed, a contented half-smile curving her lips. 'I had forgotten what a pleasure it was,' she purred, had forgotten what a pleasure it was,' she purred, eyeing Guyon sidelong across the tossed coverlet in the glow from a cresset lamp.
'Your fault,' he remarked, but easily, without accusation. 'I wanted you to come with me.'
'I would have stuck out like a sore thumb among those Norman women and been as miserable as sin.'
'Sin is never miserable,' Guyon remarked, thereby earning himself a playful slap. He caught her wrist and pulled her across him and they tussled for a moment, before he let her go and she drew back to study him. With his dark hair and eyes, he could easily have passed for one of the Cymru, although his height and breadth spoke of his Anglo-Norman descent.
'I hear that you are with child,' he said, giving her a serious look now.
Her gaze grew wary. 'What of it?'
'Were you going to tell me?'
Rhosyn bit her lip. 'Probably.' She avoided his eyes. 'My father and yours do too much business together to keep such a matter secret and Rhys and Eluned both chatter like jack-daws. You would have discovered sooner or later.'
Guyon felt a pang at her intimation that had she been able to keep it from him, she would have done so. 'My sister seems to think that you will invoke Welsh law on the child's behalf.'
Rhosyn stared at him.
'In Welsh law the son of the handmaiden is equal to the son begotten on a legal spouse,' he clarified.
She shook her head. 'Your sister is wrong.
What good would it do on this side of the border where Norman custom reigns? It would be a hobble of broken straw indeed and I am not sure I would want a child of mine to dwell among
saesnegs
in a great stone tomb like this.' Her eyes roved the comfort of the room with disparagement.
Guyon almost retorted that he was not sure he wanted a child of his to grow up running barefoot over the Welsh hill s or huckstering in wool for a living, but he curbed the words, knowing from bitter experience that they too were hobbles of broken straw.
'Emma spoke from the viewpoint of a Norman lady,' he said instead. 'She imagines what she would do in your position, and that would be to fight tooth and nail to have that child accepted as my responsibility.' He reached to twine a tendril of her hair through his fingers. 'Also, I think she said it to put me in dread of ever doing the like again.
She disapproves of what she sees as my casual fornications.'
Rhosyn made a face, remembering Emma's frosty expression as her family arranged their pallets in the hall , and then her grimace became a smile as she imagined the lady Emma's response had she witnessed herself and Guyon a few moments ago.
The lamp sputtered in its pool of fat and Guyon gently tugged the strand of hair. 'But our concern is not with Emma, but with you.' His gaze ranged over her body which was just beginning to show the changes of pregnancy.
Rhosyn stared at the coverlet and chewed her lip. 'I try to learn by my mistakes,' he said gently. 'I will not try to hold you; nor, though it be my greatest desire, is it fitting that I should.'
'Your bride, you mean?' she said without rancour.
Guyon made a face. 'You know about that? Ach, how can you not when gossip travels so fast?
Rhosyn
cariad
, you are well out of this coil. Take the road to Wales and in the name of God, do not look back.'
'Guy?'
He flashed her a grim look. 'Did you also hear that I am to wed into the house of Montgomery? It is by royal command and the girl's mother is an old family acquaintance. My refusal would put her in mortal danger from Robert de Belleme, the new Earl of Shrewsbury. If he can lock up his own wife in some dark oubliette and put out his own godson's eyes, what need to cavil at tossing his sister-in-law and niece over Ravenstow's battlements? It is about power, my love, and you are well out of it. When your father has finished his business in England, go home, keep to your own hearth and forget about venturing across the border unless you have a well -armed and determined escort. Robert de Belleme and his minions will turn the marches into hell for such men as your father.'